Monday, 17 July 2017

Who's who?

Yesterday the interweb decided to split itself in two, draw state lines and decide to go to war. "What about Dom? It must have been pretty serious, after all we are living in a time when the Syrian crisis hasn't been resolved, North Korea has nuclear capability, we have a clown in the White house, and the Conservative Party are attempting to build a Death Star (almost)".

For those who haven't been watching the downfall of the modern world, I'll fill you in: Dr Who is soon to be played by a woman...

...pause...

...deep breath...

...hold it for effect...

Yep. I don't give a shit.

Really. I don't. For a proportion of people (mostly angry white men as far as I can tell) this seems to be a big issue. Somehow a fantastical, time hopping space lord/lady cannot be a woman. It can't happen. It's not allowed. "The world's crazy" they cry. "It's political correctness gone mad". "What next, Jane Bond"?

My answer to all this? It's about bloody time. And let me be absolutely clear here, I am no fan of Dr Who. It's too twee for me, it's not to my taste, it certainly isn't reflective of what I enjoy about sci-fi. Now, if someone was to serialise William Gibson's sprawl trilogy I'd be there with bells on. But it got me thinking, not about the ranting and raving of a bunch of people on the internet, but rather about some of my favourite films that have female leads. And I realised that I don't love these films because they have women in lead roles, I just love them as films which happen to have women in lead roles. Because ultimately a film lives and dies by its story and characters.

If Dr Who, or any film, TV show or play, decides to cast a man, woman or cat in the lead role and they base it on the ability of the actor then there is no issue. This became really clear to me a while back when there was a theatre production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and they cast Noma Dumezweni in the role of Hermione Granger. If you didn't know, she's black, and there was quite the backlash. My perspective on this was really simple, the films feature Emma Watson and the play is a different interpretation of the story and characters. This basically allows directors to interpret the source material as they see fit. And as for the whole "political correctness gone mad" argument, well if the odds have been stacked purely in the favour of white male actors to such an extent for so many years it should be a good thing to draw in new audiences if there is an opportunity (and as long as the actors are suitable for the production).

So what are some of my favourite movies that feature strong female leads? Well since you asked, here's a few: